In an effort to switch to an alternative fuel, one power plant in Sweden is burning discarded clothes from H&M over coal.

In an effort to switch to an alternative fuel, one power plant in Sweden is burning discarded clothes from H&M over coal.

A heat and power plant in Vasteras, a city northwest of Stockholm, is converting its traditional coal-fired system in an effort to become fossil fuel-free by 2020, Bloomberg reported. To do so, the plant is now burning garbage, recycled wood and clothes that H&M can't sell.

"For us it's a burnable material," Jens Neren, the fuel supplies head at Malarenergi AB, a utility which owns and operates the plant, told the website. "Our goal is to use only renewable and recycled fuels."

The Vasteras plant has agreed with its neighbor, the city of Eskilstuna, to burn all of its trash - some of which comes from an H&M warehouse.

"H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use," H&M's Swedish communications head Johanna Dahl told Bloomberg. "However it is our legal obligation to make sure that clothes that contain mold or do not comply with our strict restriction on chemicals are destroyed."

"H&M does not burn any clothes that are safe to use," H&M's Swedish communications head Johanna Dahl said.

(Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

About 15 tons of H&M clothes have been burned so far this year to help power the roughly 150,000 homes the plant supplies.

Nearly all of the old plants in Sweden have been converted to biofuels and trash instead of coal, and it has an almost totally emission-free power system that runs on nuclear, wind and hydro energy.

The final shipment of coal to the plant was delivered on Tuesday to power the two remaining fossil-fuel generators until the end of the decade when a new wood-burning boiler will replace them.